Improving the human condition has been the goal of the medical, scientific, political and philosophical communities since the dawn of reason.

Unfortunately, when it comes to defining what better means there has never been a clear consensus. In fact, prejudice, misinformation and hatred have often been motivators to events and methods for bettering humanity. The Nazi eugenics movement conjures nightmares of mass genocide with its racism-clouded approach to altering the human genome. However, Nazi eugenics didn’t just take aim at the jewish population. Indeed, any persons classified of being inferior were a target of Nazi “applied racial science.” The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring was a government policy of forced sterilization designed to weed out everything from mental disability and mental illness to hereditary illnesses – such as epilepsy – to alcoholism.

Closer to home, the Alberta government apologized in 1999 for its policies of forced sterilization. The most notorious cases came out of the Alberta Training School, a place once considered the premiere facility for the treatment of mental illness. But Alberta wasn’t the only province to enshrine forced sterilization into law. The Sexual Sterilization Act was also adopted in British Columbia.

Eugenics has been on my mind all week, triggered by an article I read about Robert Latimer, a Saskatchewan farmer who was granted parole after serving 20 years in prison for the murder of his daughter. For those who don’t know, Latimer killed his 12-year-old daughter; she had severe cerebral policy. He believes what he did was right and after 20 years still defends his actions and is calling on the Canadian government to legalize what he calls “mercy killings.”

Very quickly. My take on the issue is Latimer was not justified in the premeditated murder of his child. I agree with many comments I have read that suggest Latimer’s actions were not designed to alleviate his daughter’s pain, but his own.

Although I don’t support what Latimer did, what if we had the power to prevent mental and physical disabilities out right? I am not talking about forced sterilization or abortion. What I am suggesting is: what if we had the technology to manipulate DNA, or predict what combinations of DNA would yield disabilities? Should we act to prevent those defects?

Here is a scenario: In the future, parents go for a pre-natal exam and learn their child has the genetic markings for a serious physical or mental illness. What do they do? Well, in this future world of medical marvels a simple surgery on the fetus to repair its genes fixes the problem and voila a perfectly healthy child is born. Would you accept such a procedure? To me it’s a no brainer.

Ok, what if the world wasn’t so neat and tidy, as it often is isn’t. What if instead it was more like Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca? I happen to love this movie and it does present some thoughtful moral dilemmas. But for the sake of this column, I am going to focus on the notion that a couple can test their genetic makeup prior to conceiving. That test will then generate a report predicting their future child’s odds for certain illnesses and disabilities. The report will even outline the offspring’s potential aptitudes. Would you allow a report of statistics and odds to influence if you would have a child, or with whom you would have that child? It’s definitely a slippery slope.

When you consider this keep in mind there are many examples of people who have overcome serious illness and serious disabilities to become major contributors to society.

I am still undecided. But I am leaning towards it be favourable to give my child every possible opportunity. Would those not be optimized if he or she had a healthy start?

It has been a few months since my last post. I briefly considered feeling bad about it and apologizing for my absence, but it would be insincere. I haven’t really felt like writing and it has been a busy few months.

But, exciting advancements in the development of the future master race and our one-day slaver overlords have brought me up out of the basement to scream apocalyptic prophecy. Ok, I am still in the basement. It’s dark and quiet here; the voices can’t find me. (I will let you ponder if I am actually crazy or just messin’ around)

If you follow my tweets, technology or live on the planet’s surface you have likely already heard about this. It is likely the most advanced robotic human hand ever constructed.

How often do you look at your hand, open and close it, rotate your wrist and marvel at the complexity? If you haven’t before, do it now and come back impressed. Our hands are the most intricate parts of our body and the most difficult to duplicate. Rightly so. The range of motion and dexterity we possess in those appendages are given credit by some branches of science for the evolution of our species.

For decades we have been working at replicating the dynamics of the human hand. It has not been an easy task. The hand is notoriously hard to duplicate (gamers know this well). One of the earliest robotic hands was developed in the 1960s. Since then variations have grown more complex. Robotic hands are employed for tasks as laborious as moving objects from one place to another to as delicate as performing surgery.

What makes this hand so unique and groundbreaking is its durability. Other designs, equally as impressive in range of movement and manipulation, are more fragile.

This newest design has the potential to greatly advance service robotics. Combined with developments in Artificial Intelligence and humanoid worker robots have moved a step closer. Well, that is unless they decide they’d rather we do the work while they sip gastinis.

I have always been a sci-fi geek. Ever since my dad sat me down to my first episode of Star Trek I was hooked. Of course, space travel isn’t anything like our favourite sci-fi series or movies and for most of us it is out of reach, at least for now.

The good news, at least for those looking to one day break orbit, the push toward commercial space travel is ramping up. I wrote the other day about the opening of the first commercial spaceport, but this week there is an even more exciting announcement – space habitats.

Bigelow Aerospace is developing an idea for space outposts. If successful, these leased orbital stations will be the first privately-owned habitable space structures. That, of course, has its positives and negatives. On the positive side, it will boost access and make space available to more people (albeit the ridiculously rich). On the downside, it will turn space into a commodity, which is contrary to my Star Trekesque view of space travel and colonization. For some reason I see the cosmos as something that should remain free and, once the technology advances sufficiently, is available to everyone. unfortunately, monetizing space is likely unavoidable for the time being. It will take money to get there and the corporate community might be the best suited to develop space travel technology so it becomes more common place, something government has failed to accomplish.

But, once we stake claims and capitalize space is there turning back? Will the galaxy one day become the altruistic frontier I think it should? Or are we on the road to a corporate dystopia?